


Tomorrow There'll Be More of Us

by dreamlittleyo



Series: Surrender 'Verse [14]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, Canonical Character Death, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Protectiveness, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:27:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29197599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamlittleyo/pseuds/dreamlittleyo
Summary: Laurens Interlude.
Relationships: Alexander Hamilton/George Washington
Series: Surrender 'Verse [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/796566
Comments: 15
Kudos: 35





	Tomorrow There'll Be More of Us

The end of the war should, by all rights, mean an easing of the burdens that weigh across Washington's shoulders.

Somehow he is not surprised to discover that reality inclines otherwise. Even as he prepares to officially resign his commission and retire forever from military life, he faces unforeseen challenges from all sides. Hell, maybe he _should_ have foreseen them. After so many years of fighting while Congress broke promise after promise, why should he be surprised the nascent government is functioning no better in an era of peace?

He does his best to navigate unforgiving waters. He prevents his desperate and unpaid troops from mounting an insurrection. He refuses a forceful campaign from adjacent camps to step forward and take power for himself. An overthrow would be laughably easy given the fractious state of Congress and the devotion of his men, but Washington does not want it. Eventually, to everyone's relief, he manages to tender his official resignation.

Congress sends him off with superlative accolades, and Washington immediately saddles his horse to ride for New York.

He should return to Mount Vernon. Martha is there, and it's certainly what the public expects. But Alexander is in New York, having no plausible excuse to remain as an aide to a retiring general. And far more than he desires a return to the home he used to love above all else, he aches to be with his husband.

When he reaches his destination, after two days of riding and one night sleeping in a cramped room above a New Jersey tavern, he heads straight for Albany. The house Alexander bought, large enough to accommodate separate lives for both himself and Eliza, stands at the outskirts where streets stretch wide between homes. The manor employs only a few paid housekeepers—all the staff Alexander can afford without accepting an amount of money that people might notice Washington bestowing. They cannot afford to raise eyebrows. Not yet. Not when Alexander is still so young, unestablished in his chosen field.

There are no groomsmen in the stables, so Washington sees to Nelson himself before entering the blocky manor house.

"General Washington." Eliza greets him in the entry hall, reaching out to take the garment as Washington sheds his great coat. He's surprised to see her instead of some member of the household staff—but then he looks more closely and catches a strange undercurrent of emotion in her eyes. She seems genuinely happy to see him, and yet her smile is so thin it's practically translucent.

Beneath it, Washington glimpses a tight coil of hurt, and the sight twists his stomach into knots.

"Mrs. Hamilton," he says cautiously. He hates saying the name aloud, resentful of the necessary fiction that his husband is bound to someone else. But he has never set foot in this new house before and he doesn't know who might be here—or more importantly, who might be listening. "Is everything all right?"

He doesn't apologize for stopping by unannounced. They are, in their own strange way, family. The past several years have given them time to move past stiff decorum and into an easier configuration more like friendship. They rarely stand on ceremony, and he won't bother with such things when she looks so distressed.

"No," she says softly. "Everything is not all right, and I fear there's nothing I can do. Maybe you can help him."

Washington's chest clenches and his heart lurches. "Is he—"

"In his study," Eliza interrupts, smooth and calm enough to assuage the most violent of Washington's fears. "I've sent the staff home. I apologize for the lack of a formal dinner, but under the circumstances…" She stops there, wringing her hands together in a troubled gesture.

Washington wants to grab her by the wrists and demand, _What circumstances_? With a great exertion of willpower he refrains and gives her a tight nod before moving deeper into the house.

He figures he will follow the main hall until he hears the familiar scratch of a quill on parchment or the frenetic mutterings of his husband puzzling out some verbal quandary while pacing the floor. If Alexander is troubled, he will be hard at work and distracting himself with the most intractable problem he can find.

"Second door on the left," Eliza calls out from behind him. Washington does not acknowledge the additional information. He is too single-mindedly bent on reaching his boy and discovering precisely what disaster has come to call.

He is honestly shocked to reach the indicated door and hear nothing but silence from the other side. He's so incredulous that for a moment he wonders if Eliza is wrong about his husband's whereabouts. The door is closed. Perhaps restlessness has drawn Alexander away.

But she sounded certain. So Washington sets his hand to the latch and gingerly opens the door.

"Alexander?" He steps across the threshold as softly as his booted feet and bulky frame will allow. Incongruously cheerful daylight streams in through a window that takes up the better part of the far wall. The glow lands directly on Alexander's bowed shoulders where he leans over the desk beneath the window. Washington can't see his boy's face from this angle—only the slump of posture and the dark hair loosened from its queue. Nothing about the tableau would be truly worrisome if not for Eliza's warning, but the stillness would be disconcerting in any situation.

Washington has never known Alexander to keep still of his own volition.

"Are you all right, my dear?" he asks in the same low voice with which he spoke before, confident no one will overhear in an empty house. Once again he receives no answer, and the worry twisting inside him takes on a sharper edge. He closes the door behind him and moves completely into the study. The floor creaks beneath his footsteps, but even so his approach garners no response from the man at the desk.

It's as though Alexander hasn't noticed a second occupant in the room.

"Alexander?" Washington tries again when he reaches the desk. He's near enough to touch now, but caution stays his hand. This frozen silence is unprecedented in the man he loves, and Washington does not know what to do.

He's standing beside the chair now, which means he can see more than just dark hair and emerald green fabric. But he still can't see his husband's expression to glean any useful information. Alexander's elbows are braced on the desk, his face buried in his palms. His skin has gone ashen, even in the thread of mocking sunlight. If not for the faint rise and fall of breath, he wouldn't look like a living man at all.

The sight of him in such a state fills Washington's chest with ice and turns his own breathing shallow. He fought a war alongside this man, and he has never seen Alexander look like this.

"Tell me what happened." His plea garners no more reaction than anything else he's said or done since entering this room.

Desperation draws his eyes away from the wounded statue of his husband. He needs information. He cannot _help_ if he doesn't know what happened. Maybe he should find Eliza and demand more thorough answers. Surely she would not deny him if pressed.

Before he can convince himself to leave Alexander's side, his gaze finds a piece of parchment on the desk beside his husband's elbow. A letter. It's the only piece of tidy-looking correspondence to be seen among the more familiar scrawled and redacted drafts of Alexander's own projects.

The foolscap crinkles in his fingers as he raises it to his eyes. He curses that he left his glasses in the luggage that has not yet had time to follow him to New York—but between his squinting efforts and the aid of bright sunlight he manages to take in the page.

The ink is smudged in places, in an effect that suggests tears fell on the paper after the words dried. No way to tell whether those tears originated with sender or recipient, but they don't bode well for the contents of the letter in either case. 

Washington inhales, slow and stiff against the chill spreading through his chest, and reads Henry Laurens' letter.

It is the worst possible news. He reads it three times before setting the parchment back down on the desk, and every repeat sends a fresh shard of stinging disbelief between his ribs. His own connection with John Laurens was a fleeting professional relationship, strained to the breaking point by Washington's romantic entanglement with Alexander and never fully recovered. But to Alexander, who loves all his friends more fiercely than life itself…

Washington can imagine the depth of the blow, and his inability to fix it hurts almost more than he can bear.

He should have known about this before Alexander. It wouldn't have changed anything, but he _should have known_. The timing feels like malice on the part of the universe. Tuesday the twenty-seventh. The news would have been headed for Philadelphia while Washington was tendering his resignation—likely at the exact same moment this missive was being carried to Alexander's hand. Even if the official dispatch had reached Congress before Washington departed for New York, he would not have received it. He was no longer commander in chief.

Even though it would not have changed anything, this lapse feels like he has let his boy down.

Words haven't gotten through to Alexander, so Washington sets a hand on his shoulder instead.

This time the reaction is instantaneous. A jerk, a shudder, a withdrawal so sharp the chair legs scrape across the floor.

" _Don't_ ," Alexander snarls, already on his feet. His eyes are dry but painfully red, so wild and disoriented that Washington very much doubts he's taking in his surroundings.

With difficulty, Washington shunts aside the burst of hurt at this unthinking rejection. He stands perfectly motionless, waiting for Alexander to emerge from whatever spiral of panic holds him. Washington has dealt with enough spooked and wounded soldiers to recognize that any sudden movements will only make things worse.

"I'm sorry," he says. It feels shakily inadequate, but until he can get close, it's all he has to offer.

Sooner than he expects, Alexander narrows his eyes and furrows his brow.

"George?" The voice is impossibly quiet, but he takes a step forward anyway as Alexander continues. "How did— You're _here_. How are you here? How did you know?"

"I didn't," Washington admits, taking the new lucidity as encouragement and moving closer. When he stands within touching distance unrebuffed, he draws Alexander into his arms. "I'm so sorry, my boy."

Alexander tenses as though he's going to pull away again—but before George can decide whether to let go or hold on tighter, his husband crumples forward against him. Pleading hands rise to fist in his waistcoat and cravat, and Alexander heaves a shuddering breath as he buries his face beneath Washington's jaw.

For a time neither of them speaks. The study contains barely any sound. Their breathing. A faint rustle of wind through one open window pane. Washington's own pulse beating in his ears. The chill has spread from his chest and into his limbs now. Even with Alexander tucked warm in his arms, Washington can't shake the empty sense of not doing enough.

"He's gone." Alexander's words come muffled and raw. "he can't be gone. That _fucking idiot_ , the war's _over_ , and he— he—" The words evaporate with a choked sound, too dry to be a sob. Washington stands as steady as he can, painfully aware that he is all Alexander has to cling to in this moment. His entire soul keens for the ragged rage in Alexander's voice, for the shattered strength with which Alexander grasps his clothing.

"I'm sorry." Washington murmurs the words into soft hair.

"He can't be gone," Alexander repeats, sounding even angrier than before. He shakes harder with the words, trembling more violently every second. Washington tucks him in closer, every useless protective instinct telling him to _do something_. He is prepared for tears, for screaming, for the possibility that Alexander's aimless rage will turn on him and require careful restraint.

Instead Alexander draws a single, slow breath. The trembling abruptly stops, as though locked out by a vice-like will. and then Alexander pushes calmly but firmly away from the circle of Washington's arms.

"Alexander?" Washington does not like the grim set to his husband's features, or the almost violent ferocity settling behind red-rimmed eyes.

Alexander shakes his head hard and refuses to meet Washington's gaze. "I have so much work to do."

**Author's Note:**

> Perennial caveat: REAL LIFE WASHINGTON WAS NOT A GREAT DUDE. If you want a more accurate historical picture than this series conveys, please consider these books:
> 
> * _Never Caught_ , by Erica Armstrong Dunbar (excellent and detailed account of an enslaved woman who successfully ran away from the Washingtons and lived the rest of her life free, despite their best efforts to find her)  
> * _Buried Lives_ , by Carla Killough McClafferty (a solid book, geared more toward younger readers, covering the lives of several different enslaved individuals at Mount Vernon)  
> * _His Excellency, George Washington_ , by Joseph Ellis (not as good a resource on this subject as the two above, and still a bit hero-worshippy, but still a more balanced a view of Washington than Chernow provides)  
> * _You Never Forget Your First_ , by Alexis Coe (a newer bio that does a great job of calling out some of the bullshit and hypocrisy that exist in the thousands of books of scholarship about Washington)


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